Media release

Overview of the recreational fishing survey

Between 1 October 2017 and 30 September 2018, we surveyed recreational fishers on their fishing activity in New Zealand's ocean waters.

The survey results will help us to better understand and manage recreational fishing and fishing activity in important shared fisheries.

Timeline of the survey

The survey ran for one year, from 1 October 2017. The results and analyses were released on 28 August 2019. We do this survey every 5 to 6 years as part of a wider piece of research with the National Research Bureau (NRB) and NIWA (the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research).

Results of the previous survey (run in 2011 and 2012) were published in 2014.

Making sure we got accurate results

To support the panel survey, NIWA staff were at popular boat ramps between North Cape and East Cape on about 60 days in 2017. Interviewers asked fishers if they'd like to participate. If so, they asked what they caught that day, and measured the size of fish caught.

NIWA also used low-flying aircraft on those days to count the number of boats on the water. This information is combined to estimate the total day's catch in that area.

Researchers calculated the catch of each species in each area using the:

panel survey results

information from the boat ramps

boat count data.

By comparing these estimates of important species in the north, Fisheries New Zealand is able to measure the accuracy of the survey. In 2012, these methods gave similar results for fish species commonly caught in northern New Zealand.

For more information on the research that NIWA carries out on recreational fishing download this pamphlet:

Keeping your information private

All information collected will be kept private, and only used for strengthening how we manage New Zealand fisheries. We won't share people's secret fishing spots – we just needed to know where they fished and if they caught anything.